Fine Gael is to demand that the Government makes no more appointments to State boards before the end of its term in office.
“If past form is anything to go by, Ministers will use their last few weeks in office to stuff State boards and other bodies with political party supporters and other cronies,’’ Fine Gael communications spokesman Leo Varadkar said today.
He published the text of a private member’s motion, which the party will move in the Dáil in January, calling on the Government to “suspend the making of public appointments by Ministers and the Government until the election of the 31st Dáil’’.
The motion says that in the case of an emergency appointment, the Minister concerned should make a Dáil statement justifying it.
It notes the Government’s commitment to pass legislation, to ensure that public appointments are made in a transparent way, has not yet been honoured.
The motion expresses concern that Ministers “may make inappropriate and unconsidered appointments in their last days in office’’.
Mr Varadkar claimed the Green Party had been the worst offender in recent years, “appointing dozens of unsuccessful candidates and staff members to the Seanad and to positions on State boards and other bodies’’.
He challenged Fianna Fáil and the Green Party to support the motion, if they wished to remain credible in the eyes of the electorate.
Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton has already pledged that, in government, his party would replace the membership of every State board within six months.
He told the MacGill summer school last July that, under Fianna Fáil-led governments “sectional interests and the self-serving action of insiders have prevailed over the interests of the citizen’’.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore has said his party would not favour the making of such appointments by an independent commission.
That executive function should be retained by government, but the making of appointments on a “tribal’’ basis would be avoided “by exercising discipline, by exercising good judgement’’, he added.
